Towering tsunamis sparked by an early morning earthquake have devastated the neighbouring Pacific nations of Samoa and American Samoa killing more than 100 people, including three Australians, and leaving at least 1,000 displaced.
Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said he was "shocked beyond belief" by the devastation.
Villages were wiped out, buildings were toppled, and thousands of people fled to higher ground after the offshore quake struck, followed by giant waves which swept cars out to sea.
"So much has gone. So many people are gone," a distressed PM Malielegaoi said of the "unimaginable" tragedy as he flew from Auckland to the Samoan capital of Apia.
"I'm so shocked, so saddened by all the loss."
The quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, struck between Samoa and American Samoa at 6.48am on Tuesday local time (0348 Wednesday AEST) and locals said it lasted up to three minutes.
Eyewitnesses said that over the next 20 minutes there were four giant walls of water, between three and nine metres high, that pounded the shore, wiping out villages and shattering holiday resorts.
One hospital in Apia said it had received 79 bodies. At least 22 were dead in American Samoa, seven were confirmed dead in Tonga and the toll was expected to rise with many bodies yet to be retrieved.
A Tasmanian woman, horse trainer Maree Blacker, 50, was confirmed dead along, with a six-year-old girl.
A 56-year-old woman from Victoria was also killed but the Department of Foreign Affairs did not release her name on Wednesday night.
A two-and-a-half year-old girl from New Zealand with Australian permanent residency has also been confirmed dead.
Six Australians are in hospital but the exact number of Australians injured is in a state of flux.
Grave fears are held for one Australian while another six Australians in the affected area are unaccounted for.
And there are fears the total death toll - which currently stands at 113 - could go much higher.
Most of the 20 villages on the southern side of the main Samoan island of Upolu have been levelled.
Malielegaoi said his own village of Lepa had been decimated.
"Thankfully, the alarm sounded on the radio and gave people time to climb to higher ground," he said.
"But not everyone escaped."
Two sick children who were en route to hospital for flu treatment were swept away in flood waters.
"Their car was just taken away," the prime minister said.
Samoa's deputy prime minister Misa Telefoni said a resort area popular with foreigners was "devastated" by the tsunami that followed the quake and that residents and holidaymakers had little time to flee.
"We've heard that most of the resorts are totally devastated on that side of the island. We've had a pretty grim picture painted of all that coast," he said.
Two of the country's most popular resorts, Sinalei Reef Resort and Coconuts Beach Resort, off the west coast of the main island of Upolu, had been hit hard.
Joe Annandale, owner of the Sinalei Resort and regional mayor of the ravaged south coast, lost his wife Tui. Her body was found washed up in a tree after she tried to help some children.
"I know these people well and these are not the sort of people who run away when children are in trouble," Telefoni said.
Authorities have said that the quake was so close and so strong it would have been impossible to warn people of the impending danger any faster.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said waves of up to 1.57 metres had smashed into American Samoa. It issued a tsunami alert over a vast swathe of the Pacific, as far as Hawaii, which was later cancelled.
Telefoni said local residents had only minutes to respond to the quake and the subsequent tsunami.
"With the location and the intensity ... I don't know (if) anything better could have been done," he told AAP.
"People were saying that there was the shake and the ocean went out within five minutes, so that's pretty fast and that makes it extremely difficult."
Apia was evacuated as officials scrambled to get thousands of residents to higher ground, where they remained huddled hours after the quake.
"It could take a week or so before we know the full extent," said Michael Sala, Homeland Security director in American Samoa, about 100 kilometres from Samoa.
Witnesses said cars were swept out to sea in American Samoa, where buildings in tha capital of Pago Pago were destroyed in what the US territory's Congress delegate said was a scene of "devastation".
"I don't think anybody is going to be spared in this disaster," said acting American Samoa Governor Faoa Sunia.
Sunia declared a state of emergency in American Samoa, describing "immense and widespread damage to individual, public and commercial buildings in coastal areas" along with death and injury.
The eastern part of the island was without power and water supplies.
Australia, New Zealand and the United States led immediate pledges of assistance.
Australia's parliamentary secretary for aid Bob McMullan said Canberra would lead a joint Pacific relief response with France and New Zealand on behalf of the international community.
"We see our friends in Samoa as part of our Pacific family and, therefore, when natural disaster strikes, Australia has always stood ready to assist them," Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said.
Two military aircraft were still on standby in Sydney awaiting final confirmation from Samoan authorities, while New Zealand dispatched an Orion aircraft to join the coastal search for survivors and help assess damage to villages, roads and infrastructure.
In Washington, US President Barack Obama issued a disaster declaration, making federal funds available to victims in American Samoa.
In Tonga, government officials declared the northern island of Niuatoputapu a national disaster area after reporting "serious damage" to its main village, hospital, government buildings and airport runway.
Other countries in the Pacific do not appear to have been affected.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the advice was that Australians in Pacific islands such as Niue, Fiji, Noumea, New Zealand or Nauru had not been harmed.
Neither Vanuatu, Kiribati, New Caledonia nor the Solomon Islands had reported high waves.
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